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We live in an economy where the currencies of attention and network often need to be spent before the currency of cold hard cash comes in. In other words, the marketplace has redefined value and realigned the engagement chain.

Whether you’re a Fortune 100 or a Fortune 100,000, your product, service and brand is competing in an attention economy where business executives and end-consumers alike are making decisions where to spend their attention.

So, the question for your website becomes “How does this thing help us engage the right attention?”.

Evolving a website into a tool that drives your Key Performance Indicators – namely  leads and sales — is not so much about technology as it is behaviors, initiative and tactics. Clients and consumers are seeking their own information. They have and demand access. They are doing their own research, getting smarter on industries, best practices, potential partners/vendors and creating shortlists based on what they find and hear. Their time is valuable - RFPs no longer go out to 50, but five.

Your website and the experience you create won’t replace your service/product/actual engagement. However, it can work to position your organization, integrate you into a client or partner’s consumption stream, allow them to get smart before either party spends time and money on a meeting or collateral, and in the end, puts you on the shortlist where digital choice meets the street.

Of particular utility:

• Blog - A current blog serves multiple purposes. The existence of one, used correctly, shows activity. It can humanize a company, allow for interactions (through comments) and indicates a position in the flat communication environment. Content here, while it should be voiced consistently, need not go through the rigors of brand-speak.
• White Papers - While budgets are contracting, value and competency still wins. Developing white papers and making them available indicates thought leadership, active contribution to industry, and the creation of competitive intelligence. They are a differentiator.
• Tailored Contact Forms - Ditch the “mailto:” link and get away from a generic ‘Contact Us’ forms. If someone is going to voluntarily reach out to you, seize the opportunity and gather some specific information from them. What is your situation? Why are you interested in working with us? This begins your contact with the lead on a personal level - it’s about them - and also creates a warmer lead for whoever follows up from your end.
• Industry News - You’re not the only one doing what you’re doing, and they know that. Help them with their research and be tagged as the facilitator of their education by providing news on your industry. This shows a commitment to your craft, an understanding of the engagement chain and an active organization.
• Company News - Canned content developed by your marketing or PR group is great, but what have you done for anyone lately? Are you growing? Working on cool projects? Participating in industry conferences? Contributing to the community? Innovating? Company news shows a commitment to progress and desire to keep stakeholders up-to-date on what you’re doing.
• Account System - An account system – an online collaborative space for your clients/prospects - takes things a step further. Create accounts and post unique information for potential clients and partners. Customize the interface with their logo and centralize information for a pitch, RFP or diligence process. An account is created after initial contact, but can make a sales process much more individual and targeted. It gives buyers their own access to you.

All of these only matter if you commit the time needed to create and sustain each piece. Once deployed, if any of the options become stale, they will negatively impact digital presence and translate to your core brand and offerings.

An educated buyer dictates engagement and has more access than ever before. A value transaction must begin immediately as your targets assemble profiles and self-educate – removing a portion of your previous contact with them. Unique and personalized contact, valuable information and active outreach are the new norm in web presence. Without them, clients quickly step over your digital print piece on the internet sidewalk and look for the next option to compete for their business.

Originally published in Volume 6 Issue 12 of The Pursuit Group’s Newsletter

Clients often ask me what technologies and platforms they should invest in when it comes to open information exchange, socialization of business functions and internal and external communication.

This question is a good thing.

1) It means they are thinking about it. It means that they are trying to understand what is important now, and what will be important in the future. They are thinking about the economics of purchase, implementation, training and meaningful use.

2) It means that they are aware of trends and modern web history.There are peaks and valleys when it comes to networks, platforms and technology. MySpace and Friendster were all the rage, and now Facebook and Twitter are top-of-mind (though keep a heads up for MySpace as they begin to evolve).

My advice is always simple: Invest in behavior. All generations (not just those entering the work force) have a thirst for information. Twitter and Facebook are where interaction is taking place right now, but we are seeing status updates, posts and information becoming more independent from these platforms. I can publish an update to Twitter, Facebook, my blog, my Tumblr and LinkedIn in one submission. The behaviors of status reporting, commenting, micro updates and content sharing are not going away. Can anyone really anticipate which network will be hot or what technology will be ‘in’ ? My answer is no. However, what most in the industry can and will agree on is behaviors of updating and expectations of access to real-time information and domain experts is only just beginning.

So, invest in it. Figure out how to foster a culture of information exchange coupled with productivity. Find out how your people work best and how the behaviors described above can positively impact their workflow. Utilize current technologies and platforms, but concentrate on how information and publication/consumption behaviors can be analyzed and perpetuated for the good of your people and your clients.

The technologies will live and die, but the behavior will only become more core to how we all interact with the information economy that is the undercurrent of society.

We work with some fantastic partners and clients. Their opportunities allow us to engage in some fascinating and meaningful work. Any time we have the opportunity to set the stage for even better results, we try to do that - whether it’s pre-project workshops, information sharing or this great blog post from Seth (a portion is below).

We like Seth’s blog, a lot. As always, everything should be taken in context. Give it a quick read!

How to be a great client

As a client, your job isn’t to be innovative. Your job is to foster innovation. Big difference.

Fostering innovation is a discipline, a profession in fact. It involves making difficult choices and causing important things to get shipped out the door. Here are a few thoughts to get you started.

• Before engaging with the innovator, foster discipline among yourself and your team. Be honest about what success looks like and what your resources actually are.
• If you can’t write down clear ground rules about which rules are firm and which can be broken on the path to a creative solution, how can you expect the innovator to figure it out?
• Simplify the problem relentlessly, and be prepared to accept an elegant solution that satisfies the simplest problem you can describe.
• After you write down the ground rules, revise them to eliminate constraints that are only on the list because they’ve always been on the list.
• Hire the right person. Don’t ask a mason to paint your house. Part of your job is to find someone who is already in the sweet spot you’re looking for, or someone who is eager and able to get there.

…. hop over to Seth’s blog and be sure to read the rest of his post. Great stuff: Original Source: Seth’s Blog

I read an interesting article from the Wall Street Journal entitled “On the Internet, Everyone’s a Critic, But They’re Not Very Critcial “. In it, Geoffrey A. Fowler and Joseph De Avila note that the “average grade for things online is about 4.3 stars out of five”. This may be a surprise to many (or at least it was to me) as a good part of the criticism I hear about web - especially social web - is in regard to the capability and aptitude of people to write/speak negatively. We hear about the ability of one negative experience-turned-review to snowball into a train wreck begging for disaster relief (see Pete Blackshaw’s Tell 3000 ).

Grade inflation (Positive Acquiescence Bias - thanks Bryce ) seems to be prevalent across the web - YouTube and Amazon are both reporting it, and averages are higher in the UK (4.4) than the US.

While I don’t see any critical problems with positive acquiescence bias on the public web (buyer/browser/analyst beware & get smart), it made me think about the manifestation of this behavior on internal social networks - especially as more organizations are exploring and deploying mechanisms and/or re-engineering for some degree of social business design (Alimeter Group , Dachis Group ).

Significant capital outlay for technology, change management, HR moves and more means that social business design is an investment. The investment is worth it, according to McKinsey survey results , but as companies push deeper into the space and begin to rely more heavily on information and insights gleaned from digital environments, I think we need to be aware of patterns and possible skews.

Why?

Because connecting a workforce is proving valuable: real-time feedback and data mean fast learning, course correction and innovation. Reputational systems applied to knowledge, resources, and options can quickly gauge a global and disparate organization’s sentiment and needs, allowing for informed business decisions… ‘informed’ being the operable word here. If feedback is inflated (one way or another), organizations need to be wary of making decisions based on it. The opportunity to gather and act on data is certainly there. It’s the qualification of that data, per the tendencies being reported in similar environments, that must be remembered.

So…

As Brian Link says, “sample sizes and % participation and correlated results from different data sets are key to interpreting these kinds of things” but I’m also wondering - Do we design against/for it? Do we coach against it? I’m not even close to an expert on reputational systems (again, see Bryce )) and haven’t researched inflation results beyond the WSJ article, but it made me think:

1. Are grades inflated?
2. Are there reputational system design considerations which can be made to combat or normalize this behavior or the data?
3. Is there group behavior coaching or leadership that can modify this these patterns?

Thoughts?

Please view this. If we write more words here, it will only be redundant.

WordCamp, a conference surrounding the open source blogging platform WordPress, was held in Columbus this past weekend. I volunteered to speak at the event, and I am really glad that I did choose to participate. I found the conference to be an all-around success, see my personal blog for additional commentary.

I represented dynamIt at the event by giving a talk titled, “WordPress in the Corporate World.” My talk was the presentation of a case study in which we implemented WordPress for Fortune 500 company McGraw-Hill who has a large presence here in Columbus.

Back in January 2009, we, along with partner Sync Creative, launched a microsite for the Glencoe division of McGraw-Hill. Sync brought us to the table to provide web strategy and web development of the site. We recommended and implemented WordPress in order to meet their project goals. The project has had overwhelmingly positive results meeting all success criteria. This same site also earned recognition from the New York Times in March.

Click here to download the complete case study and read more (pdf).

All-in-all, really happy with what I got out of WordCamp and excited by how we can continue to leverage WordPress in the future.